Abstract

We measured the radiative lifetime of Nd:YAG nanopowder with an average particle size of 20nm suspended in different organic and inorganic liquids. To extract information regarding local-field effects, we fitted the experimental data to three different local-field models: the virtual-cavity (or Lorentz) model, the real-cavity model, and the no-local-field-effects model. The real-cavity model and the no-local-field-effects model can both be adequately fitted to our experimental results, while the virtual-cavity model can be ruled out.

Experimentally measured radiative lifetimes of the Nd:YAG-nanopowder suspensions (points with error bars), and the best least-squares fits with various models (lines) under the assumption that the quantum yield of the nanopowder is (a) 1 and (b) 0.48.